Being the leader didn’t mean leading so much as it meant balancing, Gerard decided, turning to look out over the water once again. He felt that strange warm touch inside again, like heated bathwater rising around his heart. He knew this had come from Arthur’s blood-gift.
“Are you there, Ailis?” he asked quietly, touching Guinevere’s token, the silver band that still rested on his arm. “Are you waiting for us to come and rescue you? We’re almost there. Just hold on a little while longer.” He heard Newt ride up alongside him, Loyal dancing a little as the smells of the sea reached his sensitive nostrils.
“So. We’re going over there,” Newt said quietly.
“That was always the plan. We just have to figure out how. Other than stealing a boat, that is.”
“Oh, I said that just to choke him a little,” Newt said dismissively. “About crossing the water, though—I think I have an idea how we can do it.”
“Talk.” Gerard went from distracted to focused, like a dog scenting a hare.
“Did you see, when we were down in the village, how the docks were laid out?”
Gerard leaned forward. He nodded as the other boy spoke, his hands painting a picture in the air.
Sir Caedor was accustomed to not being included in the conferences of his betters—his forte was battle, not strategy. But the way the two boys in his charge were huddled together stung nonetheless. Only the fact that the king and queen had tasked him with their safety kept him from taking their insults to heart. You had to let youngsters gain a little confidence, else they would forever be followers. Arthur was right about that. And it was clear from all signs that the young squire Gerard was being groomed for more than a follower, even if the boy wasn’t aware of it yet. The way the squire had laid down the law back at the inn was proof that he had confidence in his own decisions and the ability to take risks. Caedor had been a squire before he was a knight, and he had heard plenty of older knights and warleaders scream when he did something wrong. He had trained raw youths—and this was not so different, for all that it required a more delicate touch. He understood now that Gerard, for all his tender years, was almost a man. And the stable boy, too, if far too prideful for his situation in life. So for now, Caedor sat back and let them have their head—until he saw something in the distance that made him frown in concern.
“Hmm.” He rode forward, pushing his way into their consultation.
“What?” Gerard was clearly irritated at being interrupted, but Sir Caedor did not back down this time.
“I have not spent much time on the seas—I am no sailor—but it does not seem entirely…natural to me, for the waters to be behaving thus.”
Gerard and Newt left off their discussion and looked to where Sir Caedor was pointing.
“Oh. Uh-oh.”
“What in the name of Camelot is that?” Gerard asked.
“I don’t know,” Sir Caedor replied. “But I don’t like it.”
They turned their horses along the cliff-side path for a better view, and watched as the surface of the ocean frothed and foamed out beyond where the normal whitecaps were forming on top of the ever-rolling waves. It looked almost as though the water was boiling, but just in that one location.
“It couldn’t be natural?” Newt asked. “Some kind of storm front moving in? Or maybe a waterspout. One of the knights in Camelot was telling stories of those at the Quest banquet, how they form out of nowhere. You can’t see them until they’re almost right on you, and then it’s too late….”
“It might be,” Gerard said. “Do you want to risk it being totally unrelated to us, or our mission, this close to Morgain’s home?”
Newt didn’t. “So, what…we wait it out?”
“If it’s natural, it should wax and wane, as all storms do. If it’s not—”
“It is not,” Sir Caedor said, still watching the waters. His skin had turned an ashen gray, and his right hand was clenching and unclenching on the reins of his horse. “We need to get back to the village. They may not like us, but if this is something dangerous, they need to be warned.”
In accord, they started back down the path, moving as swiftly as they could without risking the horses’ safety on the uneven ground. The path wound, serpentine, and they had their backs to the ocean for several yards. When they faced the ocean again, the waters had ceased foaming.
Instead, a long wake formed behind the giant head of a beast rising from the ocean’s surface, coming directly at them. From the size of its head, and the probable depth of the water, Gerard thought the thing might be as tall as Camelot itself.
“God and the saints have mercy,” Sir Caedor muttered. The two boys were struck mute. The beast was coming for them, and coming fast.
“Let the horses go,” Gerard said suddenly.
“What?” Newt managed to take his eyes off the approaching beast long enough to give Gerard a blank stare. Sir Caedor, however, saw where Gerard was going with that thought. He dropped out of his saddle with surprising agility, swinging an armor-clad leg over as though it weighed nothing, and dropping to the ground even as he was tying the reins up so the horse would not stumble over them and break its neck.
“A distraction,” he said. “Excellent. With luck, when it gets to shore, the creature will go for the easy food and leave us be.”
Gerard shrugged an apology at Newt’s accusing look and followed suit. Newt looked as though he might resist, but then did the same for Loyal.
“Sorry, boy,” he said, resting his palm against the horse’s muscled neck. As much as he loved his charges, Gerard was right. It wasn’t much of a chance, but it was the only one they had. People before animals, and no room for sentimentality.
With a hard, openhanded slap, he startled Loyal into a dash of speed, made easier by the lack of rider on his back. The other two horses and the mule, likewise encouraged, took off up the steep path after him.
The sea-beast’s snake-like head swiveled to watch the animals run. For a long moment, all three humans held their breath, praying that the ruse would work. Then, with a low moan, the serpent turned its attention back to the smaller prey, resuming its gliding approach through the deep water toward the rocky shoreline.
“It’s intelligent,” Sir Caedor said, in a tone of total disbelief. “To go after smaller prey, when it’s that size…”
“It’s not interested in horses. It wants humans. Someone sent it after us,” Gerard said flatly. “And no fair guessing who.”
“Morgain. Perfect. We’re dead.” Newt wasn’t whining, only stating a cold, dry fact as he watched the beast reach the shore and emerge onto the rocky soil.
The beast was like nothing any of them had ever seen before. One quick glance at Sir Caedor confirmed that he was at a loss as well. Sinewy and sleek, like a sea-monster, it nonetheless moved easily on land, propelled by a dozen thick legs with wide paddle-like paws.
Propelled quickly, Newt realized. Up the steep cliff-side trail directly toward them.
“Run!” Newt urged his companions, turning to take his own advice.
“Where?” Sir Caedor stood tall, drawing his sword. “Where will you go that it cannot reach you?”
The knight had a point. They were a long distance from the village, and they did not want to lead the beast there, to unprotected fisherfolk, no matter how unfriendly. Morgain might have sent it after them, but there was no assurance that it could tell one two-legged figure from another. Hiding was out, as well. The nearest rocks would not have hidden them all. The beast was far taller than any of the scrub-trees they might climb, even if it hadn’t been easy to knock those trees down and make a mouthful of them.
Newt noted, even in his fear, that the thing didn’t have much of a mouth, just a narrow slit with a pair of fangs hanging over either side.
And then the serpent-beast’s mouth opened. And kept opening, its jaws unhinging until it could have swallowed Newt and Loyal whole, and still had room for a small dog or two.
“We need to jump.”
Gerard said it in such a matter-of-fact voice that it took Newt a moment to process what he had heard.
“Jump?” All three of them risked a glance over the cliffs. It wasn’t all that far, as suicidal leaps from cliffs went. And the rocks below weren’t all that sharp, for the jagged-edged shards that they were. Odds were they might even survive the attempt—at least one of them.
“And what if there’s another one of those beasties in the surf?”
Gerard looked at Newt and flashed him a totally unconvincing grin. “Then you don’t have to explain to the stable master how you lost yet another pack mule.”
“I’m not jumping down there! I’m not jumping anywhere!”
“You have a better suggestion?”
“I want to die on land!”
“I don’t want to die at all!” Gerard retorted.
“Neither of you will die today,” Sir Caedor said grimly. He had been watching the sea-beast as it moved farther up the trail, and his sword-tip was slowly tracking its movements. His face under his helm was tense, but his shoulders were relaxed, his one-handed grip on the hilt of his weapon steady.
“Sir Caedor…” Gerard stepped forward, his hand going to his own sword, still sheathed at his side.
“I swore an oath to bring you boys to your destination safely. I intend to keep that vow.” The tired, irritated traveler was gone. In his place stood the man Sir Caedor had been a decade before, when he stood with Arthur and helped to drive the darkness from their isle. The light of battle was in his eyes, and his lips pulled back in a truly terrifying grin.
“Sir—” Gerard started to protest again, but the older man cut him off.
“Go, boys.”
When they simply stood there staring at him, he shoved his free arm back and hit Gerard square in the chest with full force. “Go!”
The squire staggered back, his arms windmilling slightly, reaching for anything that might stop his fall. Unfortunately, the only thing available to grab was Newt. Unprepared for the hand snagging his sleeve, Newt fell backward as well. Suddenly the air was whistling past their ears, mingling with the sound of Sir Caedor shouting his battle cry, a clear “come and take me, if you can” taunt to the sea-beast.
And then they each hit the ice-cold water with a sharp and terrifying slap, and everything went dark.
Newt resurfaced into achingly crisp air, with a waterlogged Gerard still clutching his tunic. Holding his friend’s head above water, he set out in slow, awkward strokes, heading toward the nearest islet. He didn’t think, didn’t wonder, didn’t do anything except swim, lugging his burden with a dogged single-mindedness until he felt something bump under his legs and he was able to stand for a moment. He let go of his companion and collapsed to his knees. Newt discovered that the surface under him was slippery rock, and that the wavelets only came to his shoulder. They had made it to the islet.
“Come on, come on,” he encouraged himself, slogging across the last distance until they were actually on solid, barren land.
He heaved Gerard out of the water and examined him. Gerard had a set of nasty bruises on his face that were already turning a sort of greenish-purple, and there were scrapes and cuts everywhere his skin was exposed. Newt suspected, from the sting of salt water everywhere, that he looked much the same. But Gerard’s chest still moved up and down, slowly, as he breathed, and his color was not all that much paler than usual. So nobody was dead.
Yet.
With that thought, Newt’s gaze was drawn across the narrow channel of water—it had seemed so much wider when he was swimming it—to the cliffs they had just fallen from.
Sir Caedor was barely visible, dwarfed by the monster that reared four or five times his height over him. But the sunlight glinted on his blade as it swung and made contact. The serpent-monster swiped at him in return, but its paddle-legs were less useful on land than they might have been in the water, and the sword had clearly made it wary.
Perhaps once the knight was able to take down the beast, they could regroup and find a way to set out for Morgain’s island. For the first time since their departure from Camelot, Newt started to feel some real optimism. Caedor might not be able to defeat that beast, but he should be able to use his much smaller size to elude it—the thing was ungainly, like the oliphants Newt had heard of.
Sir Caedor really could prevail. Newt might not like the man personally, but Arthur’s knowledge had flowed into him enough. He was able to have trust, at least while they weren’t actively arguing with each other.
“Urrrgggle.”
Newt looked down to see Gerard stirring slightly, flinching as his hand came up to touch his forehead where the bruising was the worst. “Welcome back to the Land of the Not-Dead,” he said, then turned back to watch the battle on the cliff. “Careful, careful…”
“We fell.”
“You were pushed, I was pulled,” Newt corrected.
“I’m going to kill him,” Gerard said with feeling, discovering that his sword had come out of its scabbard when they fell. It was now lost somewhere in the waves.
“You may not get the chance,” Newt said, standing abruptly as the tenor of the fight changed, visible even at this distance. The sea-beast swooped and swerved, trying to drive Sir Caedor over the cliff and into the waters where the beast would have a clear advantage.
The knight sidestepped the swerve at the last minute, dancing out of harm’s way and—
“No!” Newt yelled, helpless, as the knight’s actions took him too close to the monster. Its great head swung down, great jaws opening until they took Caedor’s upper body between its hideous lips and closed down with a snap that Newt could almost swear he heard from where he stood.
“No,” Newt said again. “No, oh, no.”
The two of them waited, one sprawled awkwardly on the rocks, the other standing. They watched as the serpent reared back again, as though looking for further prey, then coiled in on itself and dove over the cliff, disappearing into the cold gray depths without further fuss.
“Dear God,” Gerard said, crossing himself. It was the first time Newt could remember ever seeing the squire do that. Had he been so inclined, Newt might have done the same, but instead he simply bowed his head for a moment, sending a prayer that Sir Caedor’s soul find peace in whatever afterlife he found.
“Do you think…it’s waiting? Looking for us?” Newt asked, shivering in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with their recent immersion in the cold water.
“No. I think it was sent to kill humans with swords,” Gerard said, slowly sitting up with a painful grimace. “It did that, and it left. I’d wager everything on it.”
“You’re going to have to,” Newt said, trying to focus on the immediate problem rather than what they had just seen. “Now that Sir Caedor’s gone, it’s up to us. And if we’re going to finish this mission—if Sir Caedor’s death is going to mean anything—we’re going to have to swim back through that water, to shore.”
SEVENTEEN
Their return to the village was much less impressive than their first visit, trudging on foot with no horses, no mule, and no knight. Their clothing and hair was still damp from their nerve-racking swim back to shore, during which they had thankfully been unmolested by anything more aggressive than a school of inquisitive fish.
The trek was a quiet one, neither boy feeling much urge to talk, with the memory of Sir Caedor’s death still raw in their minds. Gerard started to say something when they came around the bend in the path and saw the village in front of them, but his thoughts were too jumbled to speak out loud just yet. Newt had taken the queen’s token off his arm and was holding it in his hand, his thumb stroking the cool metal absently.
They had seen death before, from battle and illness and old age. This was different. This was death in order that they might live. This was death with obligation.
It aged you, somehow. They both felt the weight of Caedor’s act in their bones. And neither Merlin’s cunning nor Arthur
’s wisdom were coming forward to help them through it.
Maybe, Newt thought, that was the whole point. Maybe wisdom was knowing that nothing helped you deal with that. You just had to get up and go on.
They were back at the village almost before they realized it. The village faced the ocean in a half-circle, with the most important-looking buildings nearest the shore. One long dock stretched out into the water, like a finger testing the mood of the waves.
A deep-hulled boat was tied up to the dock, and workers were carrying bales of fabric up a ramp, where they were brought into the hold for storage. The two boys found a spot behind a pile of slatted boxes that smelled like dried beef where they could see without being seen.
“That boat’s too small to go anywhere far,” Newt said. “Odds are it’s a local delivery.”
“Local as in Lady Morgain’s island?” Gerard raised an eyebrow and looked at the boat more carefully. “Maybe. She’s the only one who would be ordering that many supplies, certainly. It’s a risk, though.”
Newt snorted. “Because everything else we’ve done so far has been a certainty?” He had a point. “What does the lodestone say?”
Gerard felt for it and wrapped his fingers around the gray stone, but it remained still and cool under his hand. “Nothing.”
“Great.” Newt looked over the scene again, counting how many workers were loading and unloading, how they were dressed, and how much attention they paid to the surrounding area. “My gut still says this is the only way in. We know that they owe their allegiance to Morgain before Arthur—Sir Caedor was right about that. So just asking to be taken on board isn’t going to do us any good.”
“It might get us on that ship, but not in a way that will be useful,” Gerard agreed.
“Boat, not ship.”
“Whatever. How do we sneak on board?”
“Like this.”
Newt pushed the silver band up his arm and replaced his sleeve over it. Then he reached over and grabbed a rough-hewn sack and hefted it over his shoulder so that it hid his face from casual observation without blocking his own ability to see where he was going. He stood up and walked out from behind the bales and into the crush of villagers without waiting to see if Gerard was joining him.
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